Ocean Ride

Alie and I were happily reunited today, and celebrated by - yup, you guessed it - immediately resuming our normal daily routine.  What?!  You don't know The Routine?  Well this is how it goes: Alie wakes up around 9.  I wake up shortly thereafter, usually just in time for the french to have recently pressed our coffee.  We drink coffee, eat oatmeal supplemented with whatever fruit was at the top of the fruitbowl, and I usually have a second bowl of cereal beacuse I'm still hungry.  We stare into the abyss of our computer screens for anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours (sad, I know).  Three days a week we do some stretching and some crunches and even pretend we can do some pushups.

Today we broke from routine only slightly, and we did our stretching and crunches outside instead of inside because it was soooo nice out - sunny, warm, and perfect.  Because it was so great outside, we decided to plan a good ride - a fifty mile loop from Templeton, west on 46 to Cambria, down coastal route 1 to Cayucos, and up Old Creek Road back to Templeton.  As we headed west, we saw this HUGE walnut-sized disgusting bug, and then we started to see the clouds rolling over the hills as we got to the top of whatever range of hills/mountains we were about to cross.  Pretty neat!!

Well, we should've read those clouds as the omen they were... believe it or not, it was cloudy on the other side of the mountains. Really cloudy. A little more chilly than it was under the sun. As we started descending to the ocean, it started to get downright cold. OK, so we were freaking freezing with no "warm" clothing besides armwarmers and had to stop in a cafe in Cayucos to warm up, get a hot drink and some food, and re-motivate for the ride back. Yes, lesson learned. Onward and upward, we started warming from the inside out soon after the cafe stop as we starting climbing back up the mountains to head home. We had a great, albeit cloudy, view of the ocean behind Whale Rock Reservoir on our way up Old Creek Road.

We also passed a huge grove of avocado trees, which looked really neat at the part in the grove where a bunch of them were cut down for some reason.  The climb back up the mountains was beautiful, and we rejoiced and sang when we got back to the warm and sunny side of the hills.  And again, the roads were nice as usual.  In fact the whole ride was beautiful despite the cold spell, and you should check out all the pictures in that picasa album.  good stuff.

Miles Ridden Today: 51

Miles Ridden 2008: 407